Oct 5, 1877: Chief Joseph surrendered at the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana, about 40 miles from Canada.
That summer the government ordered the Nez Perce bands who had never signed away their land to move onto a reservation in Idaho. Some young warriors killed settlers, and the Army came. About 800 Nez Perce, most of them women, children, and old people, ran.
Over almost four months they covered roughly 1,200 miles through Idaho, Yellowstone, and Montana. They outfought or outran several Army columns. At the Big Hole the Army surprised their sleeping camp and killed dozens of women and children. They kept going, hoping to reach Canada and join Sitting Bull.
The newspapers made Joseph out to be a Napoleon. He wasn't really the war leader. That was other chiefs like Looking Glass and Joseph's brother Ollokot. Joseph mostly looked after the camp and the families.
Col. Nelson Miles caught them at Bear Paw on Sept 30. After five days of siege in freezing weather, with Looking Glass, Ollokot and other leaders dead, Joseph surrendered. The words recorded by an Army officer said that from where the sun now stood, he would fight no more forever. Historians still argue over how much of that speech the officer polished.
Miles promised they'd go home to Idaho. Washington overruled him. They were sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, then Indian Territory, where many died of disease. Joseph spent the rest of his life asking to go home to the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. He was never allowed back. When he died in 1904, his doctor said he died of a broken heart.